Theresa May’s speech, mental health, and suicide prevention

John McGowan, Anne Cooke, Angela Gilchrist and Rachel Terry discuss recent developments in suicide prevention policy and Theresa May’s major speech on mental health.

In this edition we focus on the Prime Minister’s speech making mental health policy and improved suicide prevention priorities for the UK Government. We discuss a recent House of Commons Health Select Committee report on suicide prevention policy and the Department of Health’s updating of their Suicide Prevention Strategy (referenced in Theresa May’s speech). John also interviews Ian Marsh from our own University. Ian has written extensively about the way we treat suicide and the policy implications that result.

The best way follow the podcast is to subscribe to our feed. You can do this by looking up Discussions in Tunbridge Wells in iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever else you get your podcasts from. Or you can paste the following link into your podcatcher of choice http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:56544633/sounds.rss

We’ve put the podcasts and links to what we've discussed on our main site blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/discursive/.

As well as that you can follow us on Twitter @CCCUApppsy and on Facebook if you search for Canterbury Christ Church University Applied Psychology. You can follow Angela on Twitter @cyberwhispers, Anne @AnneCooke14 and Rachel @rterrypsy. Ian Marsh is also on Twitter @ianwmarsh

Links to things we talked about on this show:

The text of the Prime Minister’s speech to the Charity Commission on the 9th of January 2017.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-shared-society-prime-ministers-speech-at-the-charity-commission-annual-meeting

The updating of the Department of Health’s Suicide Prevention Strategy.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-third-annual-report

The original DOH Suicide Prevention Strategy from 2012.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-strategy-for-england

Also the recent Health Select Committee report.

 https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/suicide-prevention-inquiry/

Anne and Ian’s blog post looking at the Health Select Committee report.

https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/discursive/the-politics-of-suicide/#

Two research projects by recent graduates from our training scheme. Both look at health staff working with the risk of suicide:

Nalletamby, Lucie (2015) The discursive construction of 'suicide' and the effects for clinical practice. D.Clin.Psych. thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University.

http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/13820/

Crowley, Sarah (2015) Recognising and responding to suicide risk in a community mental health setting. D.Clin.Psych. thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University.

http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/13930/

A recent paper from the British Journal of Psychiatry considering the degree to which suicides can be predicted.

 http://pb.rcpsych.org/content/pbrcpsych/early/2016/12/16/pb.bp.116.054940.full.pdf

If you are feeling suicidal you can contact The Samaritans here.

We’d welcome your suggestions of further reading in the comments below.

Producer: John McGowan

Music: http://www.bensound.com/